U.S. Supreme Court casts long shadow yet balks at backup cast

"We wonder about the necessity for it," Kennedy said this week at a congressional hearing.

The White House has assigned dozens of officials to live and work in bunkers at an undisclosed site  a precaution in case of an attack on Washington.

With federal appeals courts in big cities all over the country, and district courts in every state, "the whole judicial branch is already dispersed," Kennedy said.

The justice said the Supreme Court does have a contingency plan for meeting in a different location. He said that plan was used when an anthrax discovery last fall forced a weeklong evacuation of the court building.

Kennedy declined to get into a discussion of whether the crackdown against terrorism has adversely affected civil rights at home.

Rep. Jose Serrano, D-N.Y., said the court will have to deal with cases involving people "who feel that their civil liberties have been totally thrown out the window."

"When it's all said and done, it's going to be with you folks," Serrano said.

More minorities are receiving coveted jobs as Supreme Court clerks, though "it's going to take time," Justice Clarence Thomas said.

Thomas, no fan of quotas, said there are multiple obstacles to getting qualified minority clerks, but "I don't think there's any bad intention or indifference on our part."

"There is no callousness," said Thomas, the court's only black member.

Thomas said a top law school graduate could be earning $200,000 at a law firm, instead of making a fourth of that by clerking.

He didn't make court work sound too appealing. Running down his daily activities during a congressional hearing, Thomas said his days begin at 4 a.m. when he reads court filings from home, a process that continues at the court.

"You sit and you read. Then you stand and you read. It's all reading," he said.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg used an example from her own courtroom to illustrate a speech about women's ongoing fight for equality.

The Supreme Court requires "business attire" for lawyers and reporters, a standard fairly easily applied to men. For women, it can get tricky.

A police officer assigned to the court tried to evict a female newspaper editor for wearing what the officer thought was a T-shirt, Ginsburg told an audience of judges and lawyers in Columbus, Ohio, last week. The woman was actually wearing an expensive designer outfit, Ginsburg said.

Ginsburg, known as a clotheshorse herself, did not mention a much more recent incident that also involved subjective standards for women's attire.

At Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist's behest, a woman reporter removed her orange head scarf last month.

The woman later said a police officer told her the scarf was "bothering some of the justices."